Almaty

As we crossed China it was fascinating to see how much it changed culturally as you head west, but we were still surprised at just how different it felt across the border in Kazakhstan - especially in Almaty.

Almaty isn't (as far as we can tell) much like the rest of Kazakhstan: most of Kazakhstan is open steppe, and Almaty and the surrounding region is much more mountainous and like Kyrgyzstan. Add to that Almaty is actually a relatively cosmopolitan city with a bigger ethnic and nationality mix than we've seen in months - lots of people are tourists and visitors, and now we don't get stared at walking down the street, which is novel. A decent mix of food although to be fair quite dominated by meat (Kazakhstan, like Mongolia, has a core diet of meat) and a lot of Georgian and Turkish food, which we're definitely not unhappy about.

Decided it was a nice enough place to spend a few days and we had planned on hiring a car and exploring a bit further afield but in the end were valuing the rest and spent a bit more time chilling out, particularly with the absolutely excellent cat who lived in the hostel. He slept on our bed most nights and actively snuggled up to us at every possible opportunity, which is a level of affectionate we've never seen from a cat but was very delightful.

Other than that, Elli got a much needed haircut, and lots of walks around town. It's got a lot of quite fabulous Soviet architecture from the 1980s of a slightly more decorative nature than we're used to from Eastern Europe and it's a very walkable city though does have absolutely awful pollution that smells like a plastic fire every other block so not somewhere to live... it has a good bazaar (we went twice although never when it was in full flow), an incredibly scenic and beautiful Orthodox Church, and in theory views of the mountains down all the streets though in practice the air pollution sort of blocks that.

We went hiking up to the Kok Zhailau plateau in the mountains to the south, which was a decent trek with entertainment from all the many couples who go camping up there and invariably feature the man carrying ALL the camping equipment, and then back down the other side of the mountain only to get slightly and ended up bushwhacking down a cliff. Elli regretted wearing shorts but then by total bizarre chance as we hit the road again, we ran into two English people, one of whom went to Elli's old school, who gave us antiseptic cream for the scratches and shared a taxi back to town.

A final word to the excellent and only mildly stressful bathing experience Elli had at the Arasan Baths in town which was built as a sort of rival to Tashkent's baths... it's architecturally amazing with huge vaulted Turkish hammams and swimming pools (no photos obvs), Finnish saunas and a Russian Banya that is hotter than any sauna Elli has ever been to and was full of locals wearing a bizarre collection of felt and wooly hats thrashing themselves with leaves. It is quite an experience swimming naked in a huge round vaulted room with nothing but a scarf wrapped round your head.Read more